'Forgiving Marion Jones'

That's the title of Charlie Lehardy's typically thoughtful discussion of forgiveness and grace, triggered by last week's revelation of a track star's use of steroids.

Marion Jones has fallen from a very great height. Her admission of drug use will erase or call into question every title, every medal, every accomplishment she has worked so hard to achieve. Forgiving her doesn't mean condoning her cheating. It means that each of us can look in the mirror and see what she sees — a person who has cheated, compromised, broken the rules and failed in the eyes of God to live a perfect life.

By the grace of God, most of us haven't fallen in the spectacularly public way that Marion Jones has. But let's not kid ourselves — when we imagine standing before God and answering for our lives, we can easily identify with her sense of shame.

Marion Jones must be experiencing a kind of agony right now. But her agony can't compare, I think, to that of those who refuse to forgive as God has forgiven them. They live in a prison of their own choosing. Read Charlie's entire post.